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From the Operators

Ella Gorev of Nulogy announces the launch of The Expecting Playbook, designed to help accompany a pledge to having a clearly publicized parental leave policy that allows “employees to have their families and careers run in parallel.”

Scott Tousley of HubSpot shares the hierarchy they developed to help evaluate the skillset and sophistication of a growth marketer over their career in “Where Are You on the Growth Marketer's Hierarchy of Skills?”

Sean Siddhu of Intercom explains the tactics they use to have an effective team of account executives in a world of completely self-service purchasing in “Why SaaS sales people should think like consultants”

Carlton Bowers of Pymetrics provides a list of suggestions aimed at keeping both the existing team and newly onboarded employees happy and engaged as the team grows in “5 habits any employee can develop to scale company culture”

James Gill of GoSquared delivers a solid reminder of, and reasoning behind, why simplicity is so important when it comes to building software products in “Simplicity is a war”

From the Investors

OpenView Ventures have published their Expansion Benchmarks for 2017, using data from Mattermark and other reputable sources combined with a survey of over 300 enterprise software companies.. We recommend reading through the whole thing, but the very first statement is probably the most salient: “You have a 0.1% chance of reaching $100M in 5 years.”

Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures expresses his surprise by startup executive teams’ lack of solid finance and accounting skills (and explains why they’re so important) in a series of tweets.

Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures comments on the importance and value of a CEO’s ability to consistently make (relatively accurate) decisions quickly, as opposed to waiting and slowing the organization down, in “How To Decide With Speed And Conviction”

Brigitte Hackler of High Alpha urges how important it is for not just founders, but all employees to understand the basics around startup financials in “What Every Startup Employee Should Know About Finance”

Chris McCann of Greylock Partners assembles a playbook for launching an ICO, covering everything technical aspects, security, marketing strategies, support, and much more in “Guide to launching an Initial Coin Offering (ICO)”

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